IT Vendor & Partner; a tumultuous affiliation

CRN yesterday posted an article highlighting some of the “pet peeves” IT vendors have about their channel partners.  IT Solution Providers can see this list as a bit of a mini SWOT; it gives a pretty good overview of how vendors see Partners positioned as far as their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats go.  Those pet peeves birth ideas on how to do things differently.

Get ahead of the curve; adopt new business models, sell new technologies, understand core sales activities.  Only about 10 – 15% of partners are seen to be doing this.

Talk business, not tech; technology decisions are increasingly made by business influencers.  Talking tech to them means nothing; you need to get at the heart of what drives them.

Stop cuddling those boxes; with the changes happening in the industry the focus should be on developing and delivering more than just product and transitioning to services, content and IP.

Vendors love new business; learn to prospect and market to new business, not just existing customers.

Be trendy with transition; According to Microsoft, only 25% of their partners have expanded into Cloud computing.  Solution Providers that stagnate or hesitate to adopt new technologies are potentially losing significant opportunities.

Crack on with Certifications; a two way peeve, Partners find the certification process laborious and costly.  Vendors see it as the best way for Partners to promote their expertise.  There are advantages of certifications for instance getting bumped up Microsoft’s Pinpoint listing which in turn helps generate leads for new business.

Bleed vendor Marketing Funds dry; they are gagging for it, apparently.  IT Vendors allege that between 10% and up to 50% of the Marketing Development Funds they make available goes unspent every quarter.
 
Fill that sales funnel; explore marketing and proactive demand generation, don’t be satisfied with simply moving boxes.

Push the portfolio; sell outside the square.  Vendors feel they have a lot to offer over and above those one or two solutions their Partners are currently selling.  Have you offered the fries with that?

Often that of the Vendor and the Partner is a tumultuous affiliation, but like any dynamic relationship, one that can have a lot of mutual value if forces work together rather than in opposition.


Source: 10 solution provider habits that irk vendors